The Las Vegas rural water grab and endangered species

Water autority can’t have it both ways.

Patrick Donnelly Las Vegas

April 27, 2019 - 9:00 pm

Updated April 27, 2019 - 11:53 pm

(Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Review-Journal reporter Henry Brean’s April 13 story, “Rare frog finds home at Springs Preserve in Las Vegas,” portends what the future could look like for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. It is admirable that water authority officials are working to save rare and imperiled species. But why are they simultaneously pursuing a pipeline project that would cause the decline or extinction of dozens of endemic aquatic species in Eastern Nevada?

If the authority continues to push for the pipeline, it will have to make more room to save these species at the ratepayer-funded Springs Preserve. Maybe the agency can change the location’s name to “Mulroy’s Ark” in honor of the authority’s retired general manager and pipeline progenitor, Pat Mulroy. It would be a macabre menagerie, a testament to the short-sightedness and greed that drives the push for the water grab.

— The writer is Nevada state director of the Center for Biological Diversity.